Friday, January 13, 2017

Friday the 13th and Confirmation Bias

Today is Friday the 13th. One of those infrequent times when
the dark forces of calamity all unite to give you a hard time. Or
harder than usual, at least. Are you thinking about staying in bed
today with cookies and Netflix so as not to tempt fate? Perhaps you
have good reason. Maybe some bad things have happened to you on past
Fridays falling on the thirteen. My advice is not to sweat it. In
reality you are not any more the unfortunate soul on Friday the
13th than any other day. Here are a couple reasons why.

Let us get the first, most obvius one out of the way. There is
nothing particularly special about Friday the 13th. Thurday the
12th and saturday the 14th happen just as frequently. Yet
the fear of Friday the 13th as an unlucky
day—paraskevidekatria—has persisted since the 19th century. I
could go into the murky history of why Friday and the number 13 have
often been associated with calamities in Christianity and norse
mythology, I am going to leave that for an article linked at the end
of the post. I will instead focus on rational explanations.

The second and probably most important reason Friday the
13th is considered unlucky is confirmation bias. In
psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a
tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that
confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors. Simply
put, confirmation bias is the act of drawing a conclusion then
searching for evidence to support it instead of drawing a conclusion
from evidence gathered first.

How about an example. You are sitting at your desk working on a
random Friday. You may curse lightly, but you will probably simply
pick up your pen and resume writing without attributing any
significance to the incident. Now assume the same accident happens on
Friday the 13th. You might be inclined to blame dropping your pen
because of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th.

Accidentally dropping your pen is the same act regardless of
the day on which it occurs. You only attribute it to the bad
luck of Friday the 13th because of the preconceived notion bad
things will happen to you on that day. It is all in you minds,
folks. Go out there and have a great day, and stay every bit as safe
as you would any other day.